


If You Wait Around A While, I'll Make You Fall For Me

by TryingToMystrade (TryingToScribble)



Series: #MystradeStoryTime and other Twitter nonsense [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, I live to torture, Kid!Lock, M/M, present day, time jumps, with sap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 21:36:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19732243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TryingToScribble/pseuds/TryingToMystrade
Summary: A promise is a promise. It may take a while to make good on a promise but Greg hasn't ever gone back on one. He isn't about to make Mycroft his first and last mistake, even if it wasn't his fault.(This is a bad summary but it's the twelvetieth time I've written it so please read my story)





	If You Wait Around A While, I'll Make You Fall For Me

**Author's Note:**

> This is dedicated to everyone who didn't call the cops on me but proceeds go to those who did #MystradeStoryTime
> 
> Title is a risk that I decided to take anyway because thinking of titles sucks! It's from The Promise by When In Rome.  
> I think Merinda tweeted about it not too long ago and it's been in my head ever since.

It was a beautiful day. The sun shone through a smattering of fluffy white clouds. A slight breeze rustled the leaves on the trees and made the heat tolerable. It also fluttered the pages of Mycroft’s book. 

An eight year old Mycroft was sat beneath a tree in his garden, hidden from the sun under its shade as he read. He looked up from his book as he turned a page. A shy smile appeared on his face. Another young boy, perhaps a little older than Mycroft, ran at breakneck speed across the grass towards him. Just before the boy collided with Mycroft he jumped and landed next to him on his backside with crossed legs. If it hurt he didn’t show it.

The boy returned Mycroft’s smile with his own which was bright and unrestrained.

“Whatcha readin’?” The boy asked and poked at the book cover, never one for a proper greeting.

Mycroft removed a red leather bookmark from his shirt’s breast pocket and placed it into the book. He closed it with a light slap and held it in his lap. “You wouldn’t like it, Gregory.” He said without accusation or malice, it was just a fact.

Greg pouted. “Yeah, I would.”

Mycroft laughed as Greg clambered on hands and knees, not caring about his trousers in the dirt, to sit next to Mycroft and grab at the book. He made a face at the lack of pictures, especially on the cover which was a plain dark blue with a gold inset title.

“It’s about friendship and love and romance.” Mycroft explained simply, knowing that Greg preferred action and adventure when he bothered to read at all.

Greg made another face and passed it back to Mycroft. He scooted closer, though, and leaned on Mycroft as he pulled his knees to his chest.

“Read it to me.” Greg requested to Mycroft’s shock. “I bet I’d like it if you were reading it. You know, like how you explain all the dumb stuff that I don’t understand from my school books. I get it when you explain it to me and I like when you read.”

Mycroft just nodded. “Okay.”

He began to tell Greg of the incredibly loyal and brave couple who fight the world and life itself to be together. Greg listened intently and occasionally made Mycroft stop to laugh as he overacted any dramatic scenes he thought were too soppy and old not to be funny.

“You would make a great boyfriend.” Greg spoke over Mycroft in a particularly boring section of text.

“What?” Mycroft squeaked and tried to cover it with a forced laugh. “No I wouldn’t.”

Greg nudged him with his shoulder. “Yeah, you would. You’re awesome. I’d say you’re better than the guy in the book.” He tapped the book to emphasise his point. “I’d rather you be my boyfriend than that guy.”

“Well I’m not old enough to go on dates and I heard Mummy say that boyfriends go on dates. I’m only eight so I can’t be a good boyfriend.”

“Oh.” Greg said in all seriousness. “Right.”

He frowned while he thought about it. “I’ll take you on a date when we’re older, then, and then we can both be good boyfriends.”

Mycroft smiled a shy smile and looked at his knees to answer. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Greg asked, frown turning into a grin.

“Okay.” Mycroft repeated and carried on reading when Greg laughed and held his hand.

\---

Ten year old Mycroft sat beside Greg on the curb outside of Greg’s house. He had an arm thrown around Greg, pulling him close to his side, while Greg cried silently into his shoulder. Greg’s parents watched the boys with pity and concern as they passed back and forth between the house and the moving van.

“I don’t want to go.” Greg croaks into Mycroft’s shirt and Mycroft doesn’t know what to say to make it all better. “You’re here. I don’t want to go. I told you I would fight the world for you.”

Mycroft swallows. At the bitterly young age of ten he knew for certain that where Greg and his family were going, they would be too far away to meet up regularly and he had the awful thought that Greg would grow up and forget about him. However, Greg was sobbing into his shoulder, hurt and distraught. So he lied.

“It will be okay. We’ll see each other all the time. You have a promise to keep, remember.” He whispered into Greg’s hair. “When we’re older you’re taking me on a date.” Each new lie pained Mycroft like he could actually feel it in his heart but Greg was smiling again so he kept at it while the adults move around them.

When it finally came to goodbye, Greg hugged him, smiled, and waved. Mycroft had done a great job of cheering his friend up. He regretted lying as soon as Greg was out of sight, helped into the van by his mother.

The van pulled away and left him behind.

Mycroft cried.

\---

A 43 year old Mycroft sighed as he relaxed into his chair and turned another page of his book. In his line of work he hardly got the time to sit and read like he often would as a child. Age hadn’t changed his love of reading, only rid him of the time to do so.

On days like today when he found himself with spare hours with nothing to do (though they are few and far between), he liked to find a quiet corner in a cafe or coffee shop. He let the people around him pass him by without making the slightest effort to deduce their lives as they go about them. He let the servers keep him topped up with tea with quiet thanks. He let himself get lost in the fictional worlds of his most worn books.

Unlike his other peaceful days, this time he was interrupted by a curious man with striking silver hair. “Is this seat taken?” The man asked with a grin, his tone almost suggested that he didn’t much care for the answer.

Mycroft looked around with a frown, noting the many free tables. It was the middle of a work day, after all. Yet, as much as Mycroft didn’t want the distraction from his precious reading time, the man intrigued him. He waved a hand dismissively at the free chair at his table in answer.

“Thanks. You see,” the silver haired man said as he took the seat, “I made a promise a really long time ago and if I don’t sit right here then I won’t be able to keep it.”

He thinks that the man is being ridiculous but can’t bring himself to argue with a mad man today. What a strange arrangement to need a specific table to meet someone. “I can move, then.” Mycroft said with a nod and took a bookmark from his breast pocket to place between the pages he was currently reading. A fond smile curved at the mad man’s lips as he watched the motion and Mycroft found himself frowning again as a hand reached for his wrist and stopped him from standing.

“I won’t be able to keep it if you do that, either.”

Mycroft’s eyes drag from the man’s hand to his face. “Do I know you?” He asked, almost irritated that he can’t escape that weird feeling the man’s smile has given him. The man looked familiar but Mycroft couldn’t place him for the life of him. 

Rather than replying, the mad man’s smile grew teeth as his expression became playful. It’s as if the man knew that it was driving Mycroft crazy not to know something.

“Why are you here?” Mycroft decided to play along.

“I made a promise.” The man said simply but seemed to be watching Mycroft intently for some sort of reaction.

Mycroft clenched his fist and the man let go of it with a soft apology.

“Why are you here?” He asked again, leaning forward.

The man huffed a laugh but his gaze was soft and patient. It irked Mycroft. The man leaned forward, too, his eyes flicking between Mycroft’s quickly. Mycroft recognised something in them but couldn’t catch a single roaming thought in his head that made sense.

The man smiled softly and his next words turned gentle yet emphasised to overtly point out that they held meaning. He poked the book cover still held in Mycroft’s hands. “Whatcha readin’?” 

“You wouldn’t like it.” Mycroft said without thinking. His breathing stuttered and stopped, and his body tensed as his mind drew together the dots before he was aware of them. He was catapulted into a memory he had stored away and tried to forget back when remembering hurt more than anything.

Suddenly he could see a young boy, his childhood best friend, in those perfectly expressive eyes and that blinding smile. “Yeah, I would. If you read it to me.” It took Mycroft far too many beats of his heart to realise that the mad man, the silver haired man, the intriguing interrupter had said those words in the here and now.

Mycroft’s heart broke again but this time it didn’t hurt. He reached out blindly for a lifeline, something to hold onto so he wouldn’t get swept up in the wave of new and old emotions. The man took his hand and gripped it as if promising he would never let go. “Gregory.” Mycroft breathed, the words torn from him. If he were any other man, he would have admitted that he was crying. Instead he clamped down on that lifeline and stared unbelievingly into those crinkled and twinkling eyes.

“Hello Mycroft.”

“Why are you here?” Mycroft asked a third time, the difference this time was that he was terrified that he would have to watch his childhood best friend and, he needed to admit it to himself, first and only love walk out of his life again with someone else.

Greg’s own eyes were wet now and he squeezed Mycroft’s hand and gave him the same answer. “I made a promise.” He stroked a thumb over the knuckles of Mycroft’s hand. “You’re a really hard man to find, Mycroft Holmes, so I really think that we’re more than old enough to go on that date. What do you say?”

Mycroft laughed for the first time in a very long time. He wiped at his cheeks. “I say I think you’d make a great boyfriend.”


End file.
